The Pink Dice Chronicles

GMs all have lots of clever tools for GMing in all sorts of places and scenarios.  Maybe he has a mega-kit for GMing at home.  Maybe she has a nifty on-the-go GMing backpack for cons.  Maybe you even have an online set of tools you use.  No matter what you use to GM, my bet is that you cover your bases and hit all of the requirements we are going to talk about today.  Below I have listed the basic things you need to GM effectively. RULES:  Access to a copy of the official accepted rules MAP:  A map of the environment (optionally shared with players; optionally with tokens for characters and other things in play) MAP KEY:   A key to where encounters, traps, and other things of interest are on the map, that the PCs don't have access to INITIATIVE TRACKER:  A way of keeping track of and displaying initiative order. DICE:  A way of rolling dice (rolling in secret, as needed) STATS:  A resource for stats for opponents, NPCs, trap...

Random Tables are hard to manage.  Either you have binders or books of paper, folders of files, or folders of links.  Once you search through these to find the table you want, there is still the matter of deciphering how to roll the table (imploding and exploding dice, rounding, complex dice formulas, cross references) and getting all the values recorded somewhere.  If you are recording things on a computer, this can mean a lot of typing.  All of this process goes against the basic premise of having a random result quickly when you need it. JTableRoller is an 'alpha' version of a Table Handling tool.  You record all your tables as text files using a simple format (suitable for being easily built from a copy and pasted table or manually using a text editor).  You stick these text files in a directory.  JTableRoller automagically ingests these files on startup and gives you a drop down list of tables.  Choose a table, hit the Roll button, and...